On this page, you will find some basic instructions about using
the Phoenix Board. For any questions about the Buffyverse, or the
Buffistas, please check the FAQ. (The FAQ
makes for good reading, whether you have questions or not.) And
if you still don't have satisfying answers to your burning questions,
just ask. We don't bite... okay, we will if you ask nicely.

How to register at the Phoenix Board:

To register, go to the registration page,
fill out the online form with your user name and a valid email address,
and then click the "OK" Button. An email will be sent
to you with confirmation of registration and instructions on how
to activate your account.

How To Change Your Password, Tagline And
Other Preferences:

Once you have logged in, you may change your administrative options
by clicking on the Set Profile
link. There you will be able to change your password, email address,
subscriptions, personal info, and taglines. When you've completed
your changes to your profile, click the OK button at the bottom
of the page. The system will update your profile and display the
following message: "Your profile has been updated as shown
below." You will not be returned to the page you were reading
when you clicked on the Set Profile
link; use the back button on your browser or the links on the Set
Profile page to return to the main discussion area.

How To Post:

Only registered users can post at the Phoenix Board, so registration
is the first step. When you reach the end of a thread a comment
box will appear at the bottom of the page for you to post your message.
Type what you have to say and click the "Post Message"
button. You may edit your posts, or delete them at a later time
if required.

To fancy up your posts, you can use HTML codes or Quick-Edit codes.
Be careful! Bad code --- links and tables particularly --- can cause
big problems. Here are some of the HTML codes you can use:

You can't go crazy, though. To preserve our sanity, and for inconspicious
workplace surfing, the administrators of the board have disallowed
the <img> tag. So don't bother trying to post any images, because
we won't see them.

Quick Edit coding allows you to
do many of the same things as HTML, with fewer keystrokes. Simply
start a line of text with the proper Quick-Edit code, and the text
takes on the desired effect until you force a line-break in the
text box by hitting the Enter key. The Phoenix Board allows these
Quick Edit Codes:

b - (lowercase "b"followed by a space at the start of
a line) bolds text to the end of the current line.

i - (lowercase "i" followed by a space at the start of
a line) italicizes text to the end of the current line.

s - (lowercase "s"followed by a space at the start of
a line) creates spoiler or white font text to the end of the current
line.

c - (lowercase "c" followed by a space at the start of
a line) centers text to the end of the current line.

t - (lowercase "t" followed by a space at the start
of a line) creates a fake HTML tag around the contents of the line,
up to the end of the current line.

* - creates a bulleted paragraph to the end of the current line
(no space needed).

] - indents the paragraph up to the end of the current line (no
space needed).

> - indents and uses the blockquote font, up to the end of the
current line (no space needed).

For example, a sentence typed into the posting box like this:

Italics give
i emphasis
to words.

Would display as:

Italics give emphasis to words.

How to Navigate:

Within a thread you can use the "Last", "First",
"Next", and "Previous" buttons to navigate through
the posts. The "Recent" link takes you to the page of
most recent posts in that thread.

To check subscriptions in all your threads, you can use the "Message
Center" option to check for new messages in your subscribed
threads, or you can use the "Read New" link to check for
new posts in all your threads.

These aren't the only ways to navigate, however. If you take a
look at the URL in your browser's address bar while reading a thread,
you'll see something like this at the end:

showthread.php?thread_id=25&post_id=256

That last number, (256 in this example) is the number of the first
post on the page you're reading. So if your profile is set to "ten
posts to a page", you're reading posts 256 to 265. If you want
to skip ahead a hundred posts, you can edit it by hand: delete the
256, type in 356, and hit enter. Or to skip back a hundred posts
put in 156, and so on.

One common use for this is to ease yourself back into a thread
by skipping to the point 50 posts before the last post. How do you
know where the end of your thread is? That number's shown in the
header of each post just after the date and time, for instance "#1234
of 4567". You can skip to the point fifty before the end by
skipping to post 4517, because that's 4567 minus fifty.

How To Use The Block Feature:

If, for whatever reason, you wish to avoid reading the posts of an individual Buffista, you may block their posts. Click on the "Block" link, next to the username of the person that you want to filter out. This will hide the content of their posts to you in all threads. What you will see is a note under their username saying "This post was rendered blinvisible."

If you wish to read one post from someone you have blocked, click on the link in the post that alllows you to display the text from that post only, while leaving the rest of that person's posts blocked.

If you decide to once again begin reading the posts of that individual, you can unblock the posts by either clicking the "Unblock" link next to the individual's username, or you can click on "Set Profile", scroll down to the list of "Filtered Users", and uncheck the box beside the name of the individual(s) you wish to unblock. Hit "Ok" to save your changes to your profile page and voila, they are unblocked.

Say you've just come back from being planewrecked on a tropical island where there was no way to get on the internet, not even a dial-up connection made from coconuts. It's been months since you were last on the board, and you're keen to catch up on Natter, but where to begin? You could just pick up from where you left off, but that might mean wading through thousands and thousands of posts. You could hit "Recent", but that may only give you a handful of posts. What if you wanted to go back a day, or week, or even a month?

Just click on the Jump/Search link in the header, and you'll be whisked down to the Buffista time machine control panel near the bottom of the page. Just set the specific date coordinates you'd like to return to using the handy drop down lists, and hit [OK]. You'll be instantly taken to the first post in the thread on the date you entered. If there weren't any posts that day, fear not. You won't be deposited into nothingness, but rather you'll be dropped off at the first post following the date set. It's all very simple, really.

How To Use The Search Feature:

Remember that recipe for pumpkin-avocado muffins that someone posted last week in Bitches? The one you forgot to bookmark. There's a way to search a thread for stuff like that. Just click on the Jump/Search link in the header, and you'll be taken to the search box near the bottom of the page. Type in a word or two that you can recall from the post, "pumpkin" and "avocado" for example, and hit [OK]. You'll be presented with a list of posts in the thread that have either of those keywords in them.

Posts are retrieved in order of "relevance" to the keywords. There are some restrictions on keywords. Keywords of three or fewer letters, such as "ita," can't be searched, nor can very common words, such as "some" or "there." If an uncommon word appears in more than half the posts of the thread, it'll be invisible, too. User names can be used as keywords, unless they're too short, but the only results that will be returned are those where the user name appears in the body of the post. Thus, searching on "Minear" will not return posts written by Tim Minear, only those that make reference to him.

How To Label Bookmarks:

Can't remember what all those posts you bookmarked were about? You can label your bookmarks. Just go to the "View bookmarks" page. Under each bookmark there appears a box. You may type any description you like in the box, up to 100 characters for each bookmark. Hit [Enter] or click on [OK] to save the label. You must do this for each label added or edited, or your changes will not be saved. If you type in descriptions for five bookmarks, and then hit [Enter] or [OK], only the last description entered will be saved.

How To Reference Posts:

To copy the text you want to make a comment about, highlight and
hit CTRL+ C (Command + C on Macs), or use Copy under the Edit drop
down menu. Then with a ">" in front of the quoted text,
select Paste in the Edit menu or CTRL + V (Command + V on Macs).

To put a link back to your referenced post, right click on the
linked number of the post, select "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link",
depending on your browser, then Paste that link in your post. It
will look something like this:

The Phoenix Board is a community developed, community run board.
Participants can contribute to the upkeep of the board by helping
to maintain the site, or by giving financial assistance. If you
would like to contribute money to the Phoenix Board, any amount
is appreciated, none too small, none too big. E-mail donations@buffistas.org
with your name, username and email, and they will e-mail you back
with instructions about where to send a check. If you prefer to
donate by PayPal, you can direct your donation to donations@buffistas.org.